It's really going to depend on how much you're wanting to spend since you're just getting started. Your cheaper route is going to be hand brushing, which is where I started. I've been back into the hobby since last year, and I've just this week gotten to try out a cheap airbrush set for the first time.

Depending on your level of skill, you can make pretty decent paint jobs with hand painting if you take your time and make sure to keep your layers consistent. My Zaku Firebat (http://mecha-lounge.com/index.php?topic=340.msg2537#msg2537) for instance is fully hand-painted, and there are plenty of spots I can see that I've messed up a bit, but for the most part, it looks pretty good (at least I think so, lol). Tip: hand-painting orange and red can be very tedious.

You'll keep doing hand-painting regardless, however, as that's how you have to get the fine details.

You can get amazing results with an airbrush, though; there's plenty of kits out there you can see that have been airbrushed that just blow hand-painting out of the water. You can control the colors much better, and pull off things like pre-shading and color gradations. The downside is the cost of the equipment, of course, as a good airbrush can be $100+ without even the compressor and other parts you need. Starter sets on Amazon can be a bit iffy from what I understand, but the one I found (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KNDR26/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) seems to be decent as far as the cost vs. what you get, and as far as just starting out, I'd say its worthwhile if you're not sure you'd stick with airbrushing or not. I completely mucked up the airbrush the first time I tried it and got a crash course in disassembly and cleaning, and I didn't screw it up and it seems to do a decent job (though I'm no expert), so there's that at least.

Well I think if your want a kit to look good hand brush painting takes years of experience to make it look really good. With an airbrush you can get a very good finish after just a few hours practice,ok so it might take you a lot long to master the airbrush but for the most part you can pick one up and be painting to a good level in a few hours.

This is my first time painting with an airbrush and all i did was watch TY vids and have ago on a few bit of paper first. it not perefect but Im still pleased with this kit.

I'm a bit late but I would like to place my input regardless. If you're going for hand painting, then you should use enamel paints (It doesn't matter which brand) and the respective thinner for it. You would want to thin the paint as well. It can look good, I've tried, but top-coating using hand brush is quite difficult and if done wrong can ruin the model and I learned it the hard way (Spent weeks hand painting HG Graze Kai and ruined it when I tried to hand paint a topcoat). However what you can do is Hand paint all the colours and details you would do, and then get some Spray Can to topcoat.

For Airbrushing, its a lot easier, since you would not need to worry about brush strokes and you'd be a lot more open on paint type choices.

My Zaku Firebat (http://mecha-lounge.com/index.php?topic=340.msg2537#msg2537) for instance is fully hand-painted, and there are plenty of spots I can see that I've messed up a bit, but for the most part, it looks pretty good (at least I think so, lol). Tip: hand-painting orange and red can be very tedious.